Extending Volume from 1 disk to RAID Z1

[JJT211]

Ok, ive been having my FreeNAS system for about 6 months running on a 1x4tb WD Red. Im at about 65% capacity and want to extend my pool and provide a bit of parity as well. So i bought 2 new 4tb Red's and was wondering the best way of extending my volume for a RAID Z1 config.

Ive read, searched and read, and i dont see anything about growing a pool from a single disk. Yes, im aware that RAID Z2 is the where its at but my data is just music and movies so its not the end of the world if I lose it.

Is it as simple as adding disks, and configuring vol manager (slide over slider like striped but selecting RAID Z)? Anything i should do to prep?

 

[Bidule0hm]

You can't extend an existing vdev like that. You need to copy the data elsewhere, delete the pool, create a new pool and copy the data back ;)

 

[JJT211]

Really?!? So the only way to extend Volumes is to either stripe, mirror or striped in mirrored pairs?

Is RAID Z extendable at all? Like once i get tk my desired setup, would there be no way to extend other than to move data over and rebuild volume?

 

[Bidule0hm]

Yes.

You can expand a pool by adding new vdevs, but you can't expand a vdev itself. Read the cyberjock presention (in his signature) for more details ;)

 

[diedrichg]

Really?!? So the only way to extend Volumes is to either stripe, mirror or striped in mirrored pairs?

Is RAID Z extendable at all? Like once i get tk my desired setup, would there be no way to extend other than to move data over and rebuild volume?

1. Correct
2.a. No it is not. You are correct. You could, though, add a second volume to the vdev to add more space.
2.b. You can build a Z1 with 3x1TB and then later convert it to 3x4TB (for example) by replacing each disk.

 

[JJT211]

Sweet thx for pointing me in the right direction, im finding all kinds of info on it now.

I think im gonna pick up a 3tb external from Walmart to copy everything over and return it afterwards. They'll take anytbing back

 

[Bidule0hm]

"convert it to 3x4TB" yes but no, is this particular case it's not recommended to use drives bigger than 1TB in a RAID-Z1 (unless you don't care about the data on it of course).

 

[JJT211]

Cool thx for the clarification!

 

[Z300M]

Sweet thx for pointing me in the right direction, im finding all kinds of info on it now.

I think im gonna pick up a 3tb external from Walmart to copy everything over and return it afterwards. They'll take anytbing back

If I wanted to save my data and then copy it back to a reconfigured pool, I wouldn't be relying on a single destination device: I would use (and have in the past used) two separate devices in case one of them fails and some or all of the data is lost.

 

[JJT211]

Thanks, but it's not anything mission critical. I'll be fine.

OK, so I've decided to go RAID Z2 (4x4tb) which will give me 8tb. I also would like to the ability to increase my storage capacity to 12tb in the future.

Please correct me if im wrong but I believe I should start with 2x4tb mirrored pair and then stripe that with the remaining 2x4tb disks to form the RAID Z2 (striped mirrored pair) . So when the time in the future comes to add storage, I stripe another mirrored pair and that would make increase my total capacity to 12tb. Would my pool then be considered a RAID Z3?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Bidule0hm]

Striped mirrors is not a RAID-Zx, it's equivalent to a RAID10 (strip = RAID0 and mirror = RAID1). RAID-Z1 is equivalent to RAID5, RAID-Z2 to RAID6 and RAID-Z3 to RAID6 but with 3 parity drives instead of 2.

 

[JJT211]

Hmmmm....ok thx again. And now I think of it, in order to extend the 4x4tb RAID 10 I proposed, I would actually need another 4x4tb to extend that volume. So thats a no-go.

I have the Fractal Node 304 which has 6 bays. So in the name of efficiency and future expansion as well as avoiding the need to transfer massive amounts of data back and forth I'll prob go with a 3x4tb RAID Z for now and when it comes time to expand I can stripe another 3x4tb RAID Z to form a RAID Z0/RAID 50.

 

[Bidule0hm]

RAID-Z (more exactly RAID-Z1) is not recommended at all for drives bigger than 1TB (because of the likelihood of an uncorrectable error during the resilvering).

One of the most recurrent config seems to be 6 drives in a RAID-Z2 FYI ;)

RAID-Z0 doesn't exist.

 

[JJT211]

Ok, im convinced, im going with Z2.

Case in point, that 4TB external drive I got from Walmart, had just finished a 24 hour, 1.5 TB transfer. I disconnected the HD from my old netbook I used for the transfer and reconnected up to my current laptop to verify the integrity of files and waddya know, The RAID gods had spoken, it DIED!! It was a WD 4tb My Book extrenal drive in case anybody was wondering.

Luckily I didnt lose anything as I was just copying...so you can go ahead and say it now "I told ya so"

If I wanted to save my data and then copy it back to a reconfigured pool, I wouldn't be relying on a single destination device: I would use (and have in the past used) two separate devices in case one of them fails and some or all of the data is lost.

Good news for me, is I still have a pretty new 2TB WD Red, so ill just use that instead.

 

[danb35]

Hmmmm....ok thx again. And now I think of it, in order to extend the 4x4tb RAID 10 I proposed, I would actually need another 4x4tb to extend that volume.

No, you could extend that with a pair of disks. You'd have two mirrored pairs, striped together, and you'd be adding a third. You'd have three disks' worth of parity, but if you lost both sides of any of your three mirrors you'd be toast.

 

[JJT211]

OK last n00b question, Ive trimmed down my files to fit everything on the 2tb HD. So how exactly do I copy everything over to the 2tb drive within the FreeNAS GUI?

The documentation isnt too specific but from what I gather is I just Import Disk from the storage tab. Afterwards, is there any additional configuration needed to copy everything over? Do I need to create a new dataset within that disk or can I export my old datasets to that new disk?

 

[danb35]

No, Import Disk will mount the disk, copy everything from it to a specified dataset on your pool, and then unmount the disk. If the disk is already set up as a single-disk zpool, you can use Import Volume to bring it in. If it's something else, and you want to make it ZFS, you can use the volume manager to create a pool on the new disk. If it's a different format, you'll have to mount it at the command line. In any case, you'll need to move the files over at the command line. You could use zfs send/receive, rsync, cp, mv, or whatever else you like.

 

[JJT211]

OK, I currently have a 1x4tb drive with 1.7TB of data. I want to temporarily copy it to a 2TB disk (It can be formatted however). Then Ill take that old 4tb drive and combine it with 3 new 4TB drives to form a RAID Z2 pool. Then transfer the data from the 2TB disk back to my newly created RAID Z2 pool.

No, Import Disk will mount the disk, copy everything from it to a specified dataset on your pool, and then unmount the disk. If the disk is already set up as a single-disk zpool, you can use Import Volume to bring it in. If it's something else, and you want to make it ZFS, you can use the volume manager to create a pool on the new disk. If it's a different format, you'll have to mount it at the command line. In any case, you'll need to move the files over at the command line. You could use zfs send/receive, rsync, cp, mv, or whatever else you like.

So just to make sure I understand you correctly,

combine data to single datatset
unmount the current 4tb
The 2tb has been wiped and hasnt been formatted so I would use Volume Manager to format
Afterwards, I use command line to to copy data from 4tb to 2tb drive.
After copy is complete, unmount 2tb, create new RAID z2 pool and repeat to copy data to my new pool

Cool, I got it, thx again!

 

[danb35]

If "the current 4tb" in your steps is the disk with all your data on it, there's no need to unmount it--you'll just have to re-mount it to copy the data over. Other than that, I'd say the rest of your steps are fine.

 

[JJT211]

Yes,
4tb disk = data,
2tb disk = blank

I think where im getting a lil confused is with adding a volume in Volume Manager. I was under the impression that if Im adding a volume, the 2tb disk, it would "Clear Existing Data" on my 4tb disk as well. But now I think of it, especially with what you're suggesting I do, that the "Clear Existing Data" warning is only for that Volume i am choosing to add and in this case the blank 2tb disk. The 4tb disk with my data would be unaffected, it would quite simply just be unmounted.